User blog:Reaper with no name/The Symbolism of Gipsy Danger's Upgrade
Today on Reaper's Blog 4 Thinkin', I'll be musing on the implications of the Gipsy Danger post-Yancy. As I've mentioned before, the Gipsy Danger reflects the American ideal of cool. It has power, confidence, and lots of guns. For the most part, its upgrade kept that same spirit (it mainly improved things, rather than adding things). That is, except for the swords. Why was the Gipsy Danger given swords? It's a question worth pondering. Swords don't have a significant place in American culture (certainly not as much as they do in many other cultures, at the very least). And why would they? By the time Europeans arrived and colonized the region, guns had already supplanted swords as the preferred weapons of war. Guns were the preferred weapon during America's formative years, its rise as a world power, and the present day. Wherever Americans have gone, their guns have gone with them, and as a result they are intertwined with nearly every important event or period in American history. The American fascination with firearms was so powerful that the right to carry them was enshrined in the United States Constitution. So why then, was the Gipsy Danger upgraded with swords? An important thing to understand about every Jaeger in the movie (that received more than ten seconds of screentime) is that their symbolic purpose is to act as an extension of their pilots. This applies in terms of personality as well as nationality. Striker Eureka's cold and arrogant appearance, for example, reflects Chuck's egotism and Herc's difficulties in communicating with his son. Before the upgrade, Gipsy Danger was purely All-American because its pilots (Raleigh and Yancy) were such. However, Yancy's replacement ends up being a Japanese woman. This is why Gipsy Danger is given swords (which, not coincidentally, Mako designed herself). The importance of swords in Japanese culture cannot be overstated. At various points in the country's history, they have acted as weapons, status symbols, art objects, or all of the above. Indeed, Mako's parents were swordsmiths! After the disaster at Anchorage, Gipsy Danger is given a splash of Japanese to reflect the fact that one of its pilots is of that nationality. It's also worth noting that the killing of Otachi, stabbing of Scunner, bisection of Raiju, and stabbing of Slattern was all done by the left chainsword (Mako's side). The right chainsword (Raleigh's side) was taken off by Raiju before it could be successfully used. The theme demanded that the Japanese weapon be wielded by the Japanese pilot. This line of thinking also leads to a deeper theme. To explore it, we must cast our minds back to Raleigh and Mako's first meeting, in which Mako remarks in Japanese that she had expected Raleigh to be different, and he replies back to her in Japanese "better or worse?". Let's stop and think about that for a minute. For those of you reading this who are Americans (the rest of the world will just have to bear with me for a moment), think about the number of Americans you know who can speak Japanese. It is likely a very low number. Now think of the number who can speak Japanese who don't have any pressing need to know the language (such as a job requiring the language or a family who speaks it). If I were a betting man, I'd bet that the number you came up with was zero. Americans are known for being a largely monolingual culture. Few know a second language, and those who do typically speak Spanish. More linguistically diverse regions of the world are often confused as to how Americans can make it through life in such a way, but it isn't actually difficult to understand once put into the proper terms. As noted here, the United States is quite isolationist and has little cultural incentive to care about the languages of other cultures due to the concept of American Exceptionalism. In America, one learns a language primarily to function in society. Given that the United States is quite large (in terms of land area) relative to many industrialized nations (I'm looking at you, all of Western Europe), there is little practical need to a learn a language other than English. After all, why would a person bother to learn French or German if he or she can drive three hundred miles without meeting a single person who doesn't know English? So, what are the odds that Raleigh, an All-American man of Caucasian descent who made his name piloting an American Jaeger with his brother, would know Japanese? There is nothing in his history to suggest he spent time in Japan or took classes on Japanese. And even if he had, there's nothing to suggest he would have cared about learning other languages (I believe it is written somewhere that Raleigh and Yancy never even finished school). Obviously, he must have cared enough to have learned, but the fact remains that people from backgrounds like that typically don't know multiple languages. And the fact that Raleigh knew Japanese (when Russian would have been far more useful to his occupation, given that he was stationed a stone's throw from Russia) seems awfully convenient. In other words, there must have been some narrative reason that Raleigh just happened to know Japanese, and that reason is because it feeds into the deeper theme we've been dancing around this whole time. Japanese culture has been heavily influenced by Americans. It was Americans who opened Japan's borders to trade and western ideas (leading to rapid industrialization). After World War II, the United States occupied Japan and infused it with aspects of its government and culture. The materialism of today's Japan can largely be traced back to Japan's awe of American affluence in the postwar era. Rock music plays on Japanese radios. Beer has become more popular there than sake. The unique Japanese animation style was inspired by Disney. However, in recent decades, despite American isolationism, there has been a bit of a cultural influx going the other way as well. Today in America, there is a small but fervent fanbase of people who consume Japanese culture in the form of animation, comics, games, movies, foods, and sometimes even novels. Indeed, these "Foreign Otakus" are one of the primary demographics that Pacific Rim was intended to capture (and they don't only exist in the United States, either). The partnership of Raleigh and Mako (American and Japanese) is meant to reflect this cultural exchange. It is East meets West, and in keeping with the larger theme of cooperation, the melding of the two cultures leads to a Gipsy Danger that is stronger than ever before. And where are the giant monsters coming from? The Pacific Ocean; the divisor between the United States and Japan. The Kaiju are, literally and figuratively, trying to tear the two countries apart. Category:Blog posts